Pierides TechnoSystems along with Omneon Video Networks and Dalet Media Systems has provided a turn key solution for the Dgitization of the Historical Audiovisual Archive of ERT.

The ERT, which operates four television channels and twenty-eight radio stations, was faced with the challenge of managing tape-based archives: decaying media, obsolescence of technical infrastructure required to play legacy material, and rarity of skill sets needed to operate past equipments.

“In building a system for our valued historical archives, we selected Pierides TechnoSystems along with the Omneon Spectrum system and Dalet Media Library because of its open platform and distributed architecture, which make the system easy to integrate with other systems and easy to grow as our archiving needs increase,” said Andreas Loukakis and Yiannis Vougiouklakis, technical and IT administrators, respectively, for the ERT Historical Archive project. “The Spectrum system integrated well with DaletPlys Media Library solution and gives us the scalability we’ll need as we add to our video archives.”

“The ERT has the richest audiovisual archive in Greece. With decades’ worth of tape material decaying, the proper digital transfer and management of our legacy archives had become a priority,” comments, Mr Kostantinos Papagianopoulos, IT director of ERT. “The implementation of DaletPlus Media Library not only provides us with a digital plant for transferring our archives, it also offers the platform needed to distribute and share our cultural reserve across our organization and beyond.”

Today, ERT owns a substantial film archive from the first decade of public television — which includes more than 40,000 hours of material on 35mm film and 210,000 hours on 16mm film — along with Greek and international news bulletins, as well as documentaries from that era. The new archive system will incorporate material preserved on 1- and 2-inch open-reel tape, U-matic videocassettes, 16mm and 35mm film, and also newer formats like Betacam SP and DVCPRO.